ARTICLES FROM OTHER
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ARCHIVE 54
Articles logged from November 2000 to Present
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Shut up, Washington Post: you are the most annoying stinker of all. Just continue to divulge the lies of corrupt scientists, institutions, and paid-off antismoking zealots; keep on spreading manipulated statistics on smoking mortality and passive smoke, and - please - don't cry outrage at the consequences of your shameful propaganda. Try to preserve at least some dignity! "Reasonable [!!] restrictions on smoking have become part of the American landscape; foreigners think we're nuts." - That may be the only sentence in the whole piece having some root in reality. Keep your antismoking 'landscape', America, and - please - just try not to export that garbage anywhere else. 
JUNK ON THE PLAYGROUND -
Added November 30, 2000 -
It's telling that this story comes from
Great Britain rather than from the front pages of America's
newspapers. If the subject is tobacco and children the U.S. dailies
react with high dudgeon excoriating the tobacco industry for slaughtering
the children with their deadly product. But when the drug in
questioned is manufactured and aggressively promoted by the pharmaceutical
industry, the press is silent. The media know what side their bread
is buttered on.The over prescribing of Ritalin is a national scandal that hardly registers on the radar of our flaccid press. The story from The Times is misinformed in that the reporter blithely notes that the use of the stimulant has increased seven-fold in the past decade but calls that surge "legitimate" and also pronounces the drug as "safe" for those over six-year-olds. The massive over dose of Ritalin to the country's children is hardly legitimate and calling a psychoactive drug safe for kids is irresponsible. Still, The Times, at least is covering the recreational use of Ritalin while the American press keeps it quiet for fear of offending its big advertisers.
The study was greeted with howls of outrage from the same folks who embrace every cockamamie study that "links" smoking to every ailment known to man. "This is speculative research - no-one has detected any cases of lung cancer from nicotine in humans," said Clive Bates, director of Action on Smoking and Health." ASH says smoking tobacco causes lung cancer. There are hundreds of ingredients in tobacco that cause the cancer according to ASH. Nicotine is an ingredient of tobacco but couldn't possibly be one of the substances causing cancer according to ASH. Why is that? Because worry about nicotine would seriously hamper the cessation scam that is so profitable for the anti-tobacco enterprise. It's fun to see ASH squirm but junk is junk. There is no proof that tobacco causes lung cancer. Not one of the compounds in tobacco, including nicotine, has ever been proven to cause lung cancer. What we have here is dueling junk and competing financial interests. Keep on smoking and if you do want to quit, just do it. Don't enrich the pharma-cartel and don't enrich ASH.
Their fears are justified judging from the effectiveness of the anti-tobacco "education" campaigns conducted over the past decade. Billions of dollars have flowed from the public sector into the pockets of health educators, tobacco researchers, advertising agencies, media outlets and a host of other anti-tobacco parasites. After the most massive public health campaign in history the percentage of Americans who smoke is exactly the same as it was in 1990. This is bad news for the grant junkies and tax guzzlers who now must switch their tactic of slandering tobacco and smokers to one that includes an explanation of their failure. The Harvard researchers have devised a fairly clever strategy to explain why anti-tobacco has failed in reducing the numbers of Americans who smoke. Their ploy? Smokers are crazy! There can be no other explanation as to why people would continue their self-destruction despite the hard work of better people who care about health. In a classic anti-tobacco "two for one" punch the researchers cover their bases and curry favor with their pharmaceutical patrons: “Perhaps mental illness causes smoking by making people more vulnerable to
tobacco advertising or nicotine So there it is. The mentally ill smoke because they are susceptible to tobacco advertising (but not the overwhelmingly more numerous ads for tobacco cessation products) or smokers are mentally ill because tobacco induces insanity. Both conclusions are junk as any sane individual can discern.
SETBACK FOR NEW YORK'S INTERNET BAN -
Added November 20, 2000 -
The politicos in Albany are learning the
lesson that governments in Europe learned long ago. Obscenely
overtaxed products will result in tax avoidance as night follows
day. When the state legislature raised the tax on a pack of
cigarettes by 50 cents, heavy tax dodging hit the state. The
preferred method is online internet sales which the anti-tobacco activists
never entered into their equations proving how wonderful a tobacco tax
increase would be for New York. The howls from Albany were deafening
and the silly billies hastily wrote a law to put a stop to the
sales.That attempt appears to be facing an early death as a federal judge ruled the law forbidding direct cigarette sales is most likely unconstitutional. The state, of course, is not giving up but will continue to defend the law as necessary to - what else? - PROTECT THE CHILDREN. The law, scheduled to go into effect November 14, is not yet dead but for now is not in effect pending a final ruling.
Mike Deupree of The Gazette, Cedar
Rapids, Iowa, has it almost right. It's not just the politicians who
hypocritically spout the anti-tobacco line from one side of the mouth
while shoveling tobacco tax money into the other side. The American
Heart Association, Lung Association, Cancer Society and the Campaign for
Tobacco-Free Kids would also panic over the prospect of losing a huge
portion of their funding if cigarettes were outlawed.
Mr. Deupree is also bemused at the rash
of smoking-ban proposals sprouting in Iowa. One after another, Iowa
cities and towns are under assault from anti-tobacco. Across the
border in Toledo, Ohio, the county health board is overstepping its bounds
by its plan to prohibit all smoking in Lucas County. What the hell
is going on in the Mid-West?
In addition to the activity in Iowa (See
Ames, Iowa items below) we
have:
Ban
proposed in Lucas County (Toledo, Ohio)
Lucas
County Ban Faces Opposition
Until recently smoking bans, with the
exception of the theologically based Utah ban, have been the provenance of
liberal elite enclaves where government control is venerated.
Berkeley, Manhattan, Boston and Vermont are fertile soil for social
control experiments over all aspects of life including smoking bans which
also provide the elite a perfect excuse to get even with their parents as
well as trash American corporations. Anti-tobacco knows it must branch out to
the mainstream before smoking bans take on the same connotation as extreme
vegetarianism, militant animal rights activism and other ultra-left
phenomena that repels the huge majority of the country. Iowa and
Ohio are the quintessential Middle America that has, so far, escaped
anti-tobacco infection. Their peaceful interlude is coming to an end
as radical healthism pits neighbor against neighbor, businesses against
government on its quest to becoming the norm.
In the defense of freedom, there can be no compromise," resident Steve Erickson said, echoing the sentiment of those who wish government, and the anti-tobacco special interests, would butt out of private affairs. This man has it right. The places in which the council wishes to regulate smoke are private businesses operating on private property. The public may patronize those businesses but the responsibility for running them resides with the owners, not the government and not the public. The outright ban was defeated by the concerted efforts of Ames residents who did not let anti-tobacco trample their rights. The Mayor admits he is despondent over the resoundingly negative comments he received during the discussion of the ban. When real people say "No" to anti-tobacco, the bullies usually turn tail and flee.
Comprising the American Cancer Society, so-called consumers groups and various Big Health entities, the Alliance members are criminals since they are targeting specific segments of the population for unequal treatment, lobbying and proposing tax laws. Their non-profit status should be yanked and they should be prosecuted under the RICO statute. Underneath their flowery rhetoric and phony opinion polls, the motive for the tax increases is, as always, more money for them. Tar and feather them and run them out on a rail.
The researchers theorize that the mysterious factors that cause people to smoke, drink coffee and imbibe alcohol may help prevent the onslaught of Parkinson's disease. At least that appears to be what they are concluding although the blather about personality hypotheses as well as the microscopic number of individuals upon which this study is based make any conclusions meaningless. This study is, however, noteworthy for its use of terms not often used in civilized society. In addition to Novelty Seeking Behavior, the authors introduce the concept of Extreme Type of Tobacco. As you giggle through this press release, ponder well just how your tax dollars are being spent.
Since not one child has ever died from smoking, the paper's logic is incomprehensible. Further muddying its credibility, the Herald dusts off an argument that the mainstream media ridicule whenever anti-tobacco pushes for higher cigarette taxes. The paper notes that higher taxes were supposed to reduce teen smoking but now notes that kids who pay $100 for a pair of sneakers are unlikely to be deterred by "a few extra quarters" for a pack of smokes.
The trial lawyers lavished millions on the Gore presidential campaign and are now fueling the legal actions enacted the moment George Bush won the Florida vote. Bush's vow to reform America's out-of-control tort system and Gore's satisfaction with the current kleptopcracy of lawyers, special interest groups and government insiders set the stage for the unseemly stampede of Brioni suited crowd to the Sunshine State. The lawyers have a huge financial stake in ensuring that their man, Al Gore, wins the presidency.
The mainstream media is behind the times as it screams for more of the same but individual writers are now discovering that the emperor has no clothes. Jerry Heaster, columnist for the Kansas City Star, takes note of anti-tobacco's failure and asks some tough questions. In addition to common sense, he cites the evidence from professionals who foresaw the escalation in teenage smoking. The Center for the Study of American Business 1997 Analysis, referenced in Heaster's article, confirms what most thinking parents know from hands-on experience. Teenage smoking will increase in direct proportion to the amount of anti-tobacco education dispensed. Heaster asks the question that parents should ask and which anti-tobacco cannot answer. Since anti-tobacco education is not only failing but also producing the opposite result of that intended, why not end it?
Is their opposition due to concerns with freedom of choice, property rights, corrupt
science or state paternalism? Of course not. Their opposition is focused only
on their desire to smoke in bars. Before the proposed ban was expanded to
include bars, the students were quite happy to throw away other people's rights because
"eating is a necessity, while going to bars is
Unfortunately, the industry will likely cut a deal and pass on the payment of a "reasonable" verdict to their consumers. In that case the lawyers will continue their assault with bulging bank accounts and the end result will be the end of the American cigarette industry.
Tom Ammiano is a self-hating, guilty smoker. Unfortunately he is a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and as head lunatic in a city of loony-leftist ideologues his every belch is given a respectful hearing. His latest scheme, devised and promoted by anti-tobacco special interests such as the American Lung Association, is to outlaw new cigarette discount stores and regulate out of business those currently in operation. Ammiano and his fellow elites constantly screech their love and compassion for the disadvantaged yet consistently screw the poor whenever they take pen to legislative paper. Those who can afford California's exorbitant cigarette prices can afford to order their smokes out of state. Those who must do business within the state can save some bucks by frequenting the discount cigarette outlets. Ammiano now wants to eliminate even that small savings. Never mind that his legislation is unconstitutional, never mind that it is paternalistic, never mind that it is anti-choice. Nothing shall come between a guilty smoker as he grovels in submission before the Health Reich.
Rosenblatt received $49 million from the tobacco industry when it cravenly settled a suit alleging that secondhand smoke harmed some flight attendants. The industry also coughed up $300-million to establish the Flight Attendants Medical Research Institute, one of the richest foundations in Florida. No one knows what goes on in the Flight Attendants Medical Research Institute since it is authorized to conduct its business in secrecy. The flight attendants, who supposedly suffered grievous harm in smoky airline cabins, didn't receive one red cent Norma Broin, who feels she has nursed a viper in her bosom, had asked Rosenblatt $500,000 as a loan. Asking an anti-tobacco lawyer for money to relieve some actual suffering produced the result anyone could expect. Broin again gets nothing. Without the flight attendants and Broin, Rosenblatt would still be chasing ambulances in the Florida backwaters. Is there no honor among thieves?
The talents and accomplishments of Stanton Glantz never cease to amaze. The one-time mechanical engineer's metamorphosis into universal genius is breathtaking, encompassing as it does his forays into art criticism, political punditry and statistical alchemy. Now his astonishing financial acumen propels him into the constellation of Warren Buffet, the Rockefellers and the Medici bankers of the Florentine heyday. Truly Stan Glantz is a Renaissance Man. The University of California, Glantz' fiefdom, is hedging its bets as it piously divests itself from tobacco stocks. The professionals who manage the portfolio of the huge institution are reluctant to purify completely its holdings in accord with the tenets of Responsible Public Investment, a faddish pseudo-philosophy dedicated to manipulating the marketplace to render it righteous. The nations' universities and left-wing governments are the primary adherents of the do-gooderism espoused by Responsible Investment and the reluctance of some to purge the university's portfolio of tobacco has prodded Glantz to erupt into an Olympian snit. Despite a very good year for the tobacco industry, Glantz and his cohorts must know best when they assert tobacco stocks are risky. After all his probity and honor are worth their weight in fools gold and are as reliable as his research into smoking bans, secondhand smoke and political ethics. Best of all, Glantz is untainted by any experience in the real world. His entire career has been financed by taxpayers thereby freeing him from any need to produce a product or render a service that anyone would care to purchase. |
between caffeine, alcohol and tobacco intake in regard
to Parkinson's disease. The researchers are loath to admit that smoking tobacco
appears to help prevent Parkinson's so they contort the English language and torture logic
rendering their conclusions into meaningless globs of effluence.
What kind of moron would buy the above argument? Why, a guilty smoker of
course!